Book Review: Messi vs. Ronaldo by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg
A few years ago there was a news story about a Spanish tennis fan coming out of an 11-year coma who was amazed that his favorite player Roger Federer was still dominant and winning Grand Slams. I don’t remember reading about any similar accounts around supporters of Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi but their long and concurrent reigns at the top of global soccer are certainly remarkable. From 2008 to 2018 one of the two won FIFA’s Golden Boot as the top player and the internet is full of arguments, articles, and websites devoted to determining which player is superior.
Despite its title, Messi vs. Ronaldo isn’t really about determining the winner of the matchup. Good thing to, given that it was published before Messi’s Argentina won the 2022 World Cup while Ronaldo was benched over large chunks of the competition and had his contract terminated by Manchester United during the same time period. Rather, it examines the rivalry itself and the factors on and off the field that helped both players ascend to such lofty heights. It’s a solid read about the rise of modern international soccer, especially if you’re interested in the business side of the sport.
Robinson and Clegg both cover sports for the Wall Street Journal and bring deep knowledge of the sport and business savvy. The reader gets a history of both player’s careers as well as the growth of sponsorships, the English Premier League and other top-flight leagues, mega-teams like Manchester United and FC Barcelona, soccer media, and more. The biographical details and big career moments may be old hat to some readers more familiar to such players (having only really started to follow the sport in the mid-2010s I found the earlier biographical portions more insightful), but the book shines with covering the economic forces that elevated both players into major international celebrity. Accounts such as how Nike got into soccer cleats and how teams sold off sponsorship rights in basically every possible economic sector were especially fascinating to me.
Again, there’s not going to be anything about the 2022 World Cup or Ronaldo’s recent decline and the coverage of Portugal’s 2016 Euros win or Messi’s courtship with Paris Saint-Germain may not add a ton to those subjects and the authors don’t care about deciding who is better (though I’d assume most would lean towards Messi after what just transpired in Qatar). Instead, the book aims to chronicle the rise of modern soccer through the deeply interconnected histories of two of its biggest stars, and it does a very good job of that.
8/10